An old/new game has emerged and is being played by millions from Norway to New Zealand. It is called guess as you can, and it is played on paper, in the aether, and every kind of screen from the smallest to the largest. Its objective? To divine what the world will be like once the current corona crisis is gone (for gone, and even more or less forgotten, it will be). At six after the war, as the good soldier Švejk put it long ago. Having spent much of the last eighteen months or so researching the methods people use in their attempts to look into the future, I cannot say I am impressed by their efforts. Almost all of which appear to be ill-supported, superficial, and biased—very often, without the authors even being aware that they are.
Such being the case, probably at least as useful, and certainly far easier, to list some of the things which, unless I am badly mistaken, almost certainly will not change. Not in the short- or medium term, whatever those much-abused expressions may mean. And not in the long one either.
So here goes.
Religion
* For those who believe that God exists, His ways will remain as mysterious as they have been since He spoke to Job out of the whirlwind. For those who don’t, the most important questions of all—whether the world has always existed, who or what was responsible for our appearance on earth, where we are going, how we are supposed to live, and what the point of all of it may be—will stay open.
History
* The main reason the corona outbreak will not push history off its rails is because, as I said, it will be almost entirely forgotten. The reason why it will be almost entirely forgotten is because it will be displaced by other events; whatever is happening today is always considered the most important of all. Not necessarily because it is, but because that is the way people’s minds work.
* Furthermore loose talk about pandemics notwithstanding, the number of those who die of coronavirus will hardly make a dent in global demographics. In that sense, at any rate, life seems to be stronger than death. Ergo, history will not come to an end any more than it did in 1347-51 when people thought that the Day of Judgement had come. And in 1991, when Francis Fukuyama published his famous article by that title. Instead it will continue to work as it has always done and as Hegel wrote: namely, by thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, And so on, by fits and starts, towards a millennium which, as he did not write, will never arrive.
Politics, International Relations, and War
* As if to prove that nothing ever changes, the world will continue to function in exactly the way Thucydides, Kautilya, Machiavelli and Hobbes said it does. Rivalry between communities, governments and states, specifically including the one between the U.S and China but also between various regional actors, will continue and be as intensive as it has always been.
* Pace the American psychologist Steven Pinker and the political scientists from whom he took his figures, wars will still be there. Most, but probably not all, civil ones in what is euphemistically known as the “developing” world. While I am willing to bet that there will be no nuclear world war, some of the wars in question will continue to be very bloody; but not nearly enough so as to destroy “civilization as we know it,” as Cold-War era people used to say. All technological progress notwithstanding, the vast majority of wars will continue to be fought on land, not at sea or in outer space. And they will be won, not by the belligerent with the most sophisticated technology but by the one that is most determined and, often enough, most brutal.
Social and Economic Affairs
* Emerging from the crisis, some people will go on working from home. But not those who matter. Why? Because the principle, les absents ont toujours tort (those who are absent are always wrong) will continue to apply.
* Contrary to the vision of a few people who foresee greater equality, the contrast between what Plato called plutos, wealth, and penia, want, will continue just as it always has. Here and there the outcome will be insurrections and civil wars. However, even the most successful of those efforts will only be effective for more than a few decades at most. The majority will only produce greater misery for almost everyone involved.
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* Though some restrictions on travel will remain in force, globalization will continue. And masses of refugees, both real and fake, will continue to do whatever they can to cross national borders in search of a better life. A great many of them will succeed, causing all kinds of cultural, social, economic, legal and political problems.
Surveillance
* From my former student, the famous Yuval Harari, down, many people believe that the present crisis will accelerate the trend towards greater state surveillance and interference in our lives. Probably so; but this very trend will also accelerate the development of countermeasures such as quantum-based passwords, certain kinds of glasses and makeup, and the like. Even now, some apps will show drivers the location of mobile disease-testing stations so as to enable drivers to avoid them in case that’s what they want. In the end, surveillance is likely to be neither more nor less tight, more or less able to prevent dissension and even revolution, than it has ever been. Long-time Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu thought he had it made. Yet in the end, so oppressive was his regime that all it took to topple him was a few hostile catcalls rising from a crowd he himself had summoned to celebrate his rule. Xi Jinping, be warned.
Human Development
* Corona having gone, and further advances in computer- and brain science notwithstanding, we still won’t have the foggiest idea how dead matter can produce a mind capable of thought, emotion, and, last not least, such mysterious states as dreaming, hypnosis and comma. Nor how mind, i.e the will, can cause the body to act. Meanwhile every single human quality, starting with affection and ending with zeal, will continue to do as much as to shape our lives as it has always done. And our understanding of ourselves will remain as limited as it has always been.
* The most important social problems, meaning those associated with birth, marriage, death, and health (both physiological and mental) will persist. So will those arising out of envy and hatred as well as justice and its opposite, injustice. People will continue to earn their bread with the sweat of their brows, just as they have always done. They will also go on enjoying love, ex, company, leisure, sport, festivities of every kind, music, literature, art, etc. As a result of all this, the post-corona world will be neither more nor less happy than the one we have always inhabited.
* Finally, environmentalists, vegans and any number of other spoilsports will continue to blame mankind (themselves only excepted) for breathing, eating, drinking, farting, excreting, consuming, traveling, and having children; in short, for daring to exist on this earth.
Sex and Gender
* Sex is one of the most powerful—Freud thought, the most powerful of all—forces shaping society. It is also the method by which we humans produce offspring. As a result, no society has ever ceased thinking about it and interfering with it. As by telling people with whom they are allowed to have it, under what circumstances, and what they are and are not allowed to do while engaging in it. And that will remain the case in the future too.
* Women will continue to conceive, bear children, labor and give birth, whereas men will not. Partly for that reason, partly because they are stronger, physically, by and large men will continue to act as the defenders and feeders (qawwamun, as the Koran puts it) of women rather than the other way around. After corona as before it, a man who lays down his life to save a woman will be praised. After corona as before it, a man who allows a woman to lay down her life for him will be dishonored.
* Notwithstanding these and other privileges women enjoy, feminists, claiming to represent half of the population, will continue to complain about the other half. And the more they complain, the more their penis envy will show through.
Looking into the Future
A great many people devote much of their working lives to trying to look into the future. In the past, doing so was the province of prophets, soothsayers, magicians, and astrologists. Today we are as likely to turn to physicists, astronomers, evolutionists, physicians, economists, sociologists and futurologists of every kind. Nevertheless, our ability to understand, let alone control, our destiny will remain as feeble as it was when the first homo sapiens wondered whether or not he would still be alive on the next day.
